WHAT OF THE HARVEST? 307 



Yet this Hampshire village by no means stood alone in 

 betraying the low pulse into which parochial politics had 

 sunk where no workers' organisation revived the interest. 

 In a West Sussex village, lying in a charming, but sleepy 

 hollow of the South Downs, five persons only made their 

 appearance at the Annual Parish Meeting. 



In my own parish no organised attempt had ever been 

 made by the workers to capture the Parish Council before 

 1919. The farm workers pressed me to stand with six of 

 them, and I agreed to become once more a Parish Council 

 candidate after a lapse of twenty years. The experience 

 was interesting to me, for it marked a distinct milestone on 

 the road towards freedom taken by the agricultural w r orker. 

 I managed to borrow a motor car from a well-to-do gen- 

 tleman who considered Parish Councils were quite harmless 

 institutions, and I conveyed a number of electors from dis- 

 tant farm-tied cottages to the polling station. The marked 

 difference I noted between 1897 an( ^ I 9 I 9 was the growing 

 fearlessness of farm-workers and their wives. In broad 

 daylight I whisked them away from under the very noses 

 of their employers and from under the eyes of the Rector, 

 who dispensed the loaves and fishes, and was working 

 against us. Even the elderly, reared in the old school of 

 servitude, displayed an astonishingly gay spirit of indepen- 

 dence. Amongst these I shall always remember with 

 special interest an old man in his smock frock who could 

 neither read nor write and retired to bed every night at 

 six, and an old lady of eighty who could read and write 

 and who proudly refused any help on the score of failing 

 eyesight. Had she not stitched a smock-frock for me fifteen 

 years ago for 33. and a brace of rabbits ? 



It has been impossible to obtain a list of farm workers 

 who won seats on Parish Councils, but the number must be 

 very considerable, judging by reports sent to me by organ- 

 isers. I have, however, been able to obtain figures, which 

 are still incomplete, of the number of " Labour " Rural 

 District Councillors in England and Wales, and that number 

 is 860. x An incomplete -list of County Council seats won 



1 Supplied by the Labour Party. 



